22 January 2019

Twilight in California – VDH nails it

George Rebane

Victor Davis Hanson, California farmer, premier academic, and syndicated columnist, has given a comprehensive analysis of California’s sunset – and I do mean comprehensive. We have covered the work of VDH many times on these pages (e.g. here), and in ‘Wealth, Poverty, and Flight: The Same Old California’ he takes us through a cold shower look at ourselves from multiple viewpoints, using hard stats on which to base his points. I was going to include this in the last Scattershots, and forgot. Then two friends emailed me a kick in the pants, and on second thought, this outstanding essay demands a post of its very own to draw readers’ attention to it.

California truly is the canary in our country’s mineshaft – “Insulated coastal elites, impoverished immigrants, and a fleeing middle class.” The Left has brought the state to its current condition of decline and decrepitude, and is now busy practicing the fine art of political taxidermy and ideological embalming to continue selling the image of what once was California. And as VDH points out, our share of the nation’s double dummies is so high today that almost any kind of socialist bullcrap is easily peddled and readily consumed – our own county is an illustrative work-in-progress as the progressive pandemic spreads into the Sierra.

This essay is a must read, if for nothing else than to take the measure of our Left as it denies chapter and verse of what is presented, while the state continues to sink under total one-party rule that is now going into socialist overdrive. There is no state that is more locked into the attempt to solve its every mounting problem by piling on regulations and increasing taxes.

Comments

Actually, the VDH essay I was recommending was published today and beautifully summarizes what we have learned to date about Muellergate. And skip the crap about these guys being 'Republicans'" they're the deep state we are somehow now just getting to know. L

L @06:51 I read the Muellergate essay and was very troubled that we have two justice systems in the US one for the folks and one for the Friends of the FBI. It is time for Trump to clean house and dismantle the second justice systems.

Russ @ 10:19. After posting the above, I went back to NRO to reread the piece and it was gone! Nor has it re-appeared there, tho it's easy enough to find on line.

In the comment stream was yet another reference linking Natalya Veselnitskaya to the Fusion group and Steele, a connection that, if true, would make the June 9 Trump tower meeting a HRC false flag operation and demonstrate beyond all doubt that it is she who colluded with the Russians to influence the election. Interesting... L

In case anyone is missing the point, if the Ruski lawyeress was part of the Fusion Group activities, she was sent there to set up Trump. Part and parcel of the current Democrat obsession with accusing others of exactly what they themselves are doing. L

,,,since when have itinerant farm workers not been impoverished???,,,many already impoverished California natives have for the last century also supplemented their incomes by picking fruit and vegetable in our central valleys

,,,since when have we not had coastal elites??? Insulated from what??? All those immigrants are washing their clothes, mowing their lawns, washing their dishes. Those workers just have to drive two hours to get to work because they cannot afford to live in those insulated enclaves

,,,fleeing middle class,,,they don't '''flee''',,,they go where the jobs are,,,remember the Dust Bowl Diaspora???,,,remember the war time and post war industries in California,,,since the advent of the microprocessor and automation those physical labor jobs not requiring STEM training have been harder to come by

,,,cranky bastards flee,,,from high state taxes to places like Florida, Nevada, et al.,,,or to gun happy communities in Idaho.

,,,VDH is getting old and cranky himself,,,somebody dumped a spray rig on his property,,,sounds like he needs to build a wall and have immigrants pay for it!!! Grand theft auto has been going on since the Model T days

,,,VDH thought he was safe from the madding crowds in his prune orchard but with 40 million people looking for a place to be civilization has found him

M 1213pm - Excellent Mr M. We needed corroboration of the progressive view on all that is going on in CA. And you confirmed that the Left has noticed none of it - as also attested by the Dems in Sacramento - and that things in the Golden State are as golden as always. Thank you for that perspective.

M 4:33: Having now unmistakably identified himself, I can now damn one Doug Keachie to Hell for helping ruin the two generations of intellectual ***M***oron voters he foisted upon the once great state of California. Thanks, A-hole. L

Why don't you guys get together and do something to restore the Republican Party so California can be at least a two party state? Of course you've got the insurmountable obstacle with Trump as President because he's historically unpopular in California and is only going down further. Without the restoration of the Repub party your ideas are sunk and irrelevant and they will never happen.

Most of the money making Repubs are leaving the state. The exodus will continue. A friend of mine is taking his water truck service to Georgia. He's been here all his life. Kiss another taxable income bye bye. More regulations and fees by SAC. did the trick.

The Republican party was the party of the middle class and they have left or are leaving the state in droves. What is left of the Republican Party will continue to fight until they are all dead and or have left the state. Reconstitution does not seem to be in the works until there is a major cultural change in the state, and that will only come after the socialist crash and burn. California will have to go through it's Cuba and Venezuela periods first and then after the total crash and burn will the reconstruction begin. And then, the Republican's will return to the once great state of California and the reconstitution of the Grand Old Party will be awesome!

The Dems in Kali are where they are thanks to skillful manipulation of money in the State... it has been a steady erosion since Jerry Brown made public employee unions able to collectively bargain for wages and benefits, thus creating a money stream from unions to political campaigns... to Democrats. Wages and pensions are unsustainable at current levels and there will be continued pressure up.

Now the election process itself is being fiddled with... Democrats are gathering ballots to deliver in a process called "ballot harvesting".... it stinks to high heaven.

I do agree a two party or three party state is better than a one party state, but the one party state we have is on a collision course with a financial reality that won't be able to pay the bills once the pension bomb starts igniting. And the climate bomb that won't ignite leaving us with huge energy bills compared to the rest of the 50 states, not to mention the rest of the world.

Paul, enjoy the time with the GOP in the dumpster in Kali... everyone you saw on the way down will be the ones you see when they rise again. The Progressives will not be on top for very long... other people's money will run out and the golden goose will be cooked.

I will be happy to be boosting the Libertarian Party to help pick up the pieces when it happens. I don't expect to see you doing any of that lifting.

How do you all get out of bed in the morning knowing you have to live another day in California? Maybe you would feel better about life and living if you moved to Alabama or Mississippi where you and your ideas would fit in better. I would imagine it would be way less stressful and you might live longer because no one would disagree with you. The people you vote for would even win most of the time. How great would that be free from those damn CA Dems who are flushing the state down the sewer?

You guys sound like the hippies in the 60's-talking about waiting for the whole thing crash down and thriving in the rubble. Poor California Republican Party. Earl Warren, George Deukmejian, and Ronald Reagan must be rolling in their graves at what Trump has done to their party and The Swartz and Pete Wilson are gagging after every election. Remarkable that the Republicans who have elected Governors in California for 32 of the last 52 years have fallen this far but there you have it. It will only get worse unless the responsible Pubs take control of their own party and boot Trump and his ilk.

Obviously they are not going to get help from the Todds, Bills and Walts of the party who are blissing out thinking things are just hunky dory and doing fine.

You are not a Republican Gregory but those that have any perspective know what a disaster Trump is to the party and are going to do what they need to do to turn things around. Waiting for the inevitable of Trump losing the next election will not do.

Everett Dirksen had it right:
" [T]he forces of our national life are not brought to bear on public questions solely in proportion to the weight of numbers. If they were, the 6 million citizens of the Chicago area would hold sway in the Illinois Legislature without consideration of the problems of their 4 million fellows who are scattered in 100 other counties. Under the Court's new decree, California could be dominated by Los Angeles and San Francisco; Michigan by Detroit."

That's Proggy thinking. The country is humming along like no one has seen in a LONG time, and the likes of Paul call it a "disaster".
Just what is that disaster Paul? Just what has Trump done to harm the nation? You have never answered that.(because you can't)

Common sense would see these people to the back door so they could go east to more hater friendly places like El Paso or Montgomery. I don't understand why they stay in such a painful and awful place anymore than Wilbur Ross can't understand why unemployed Federal employees don't just stroll down to their neighborhood bank and take out a loan to feed their families and pay the doctor bills.

BTW Palm Springs is perfect right now. It is habit forming this time of year.

That a great rebuttal Paul. Great counter point.
Unemployment record lows across the board. wages up like never before.
The ONLY places showing signs of problems are the LIB infested cities and states.
Not that you really give a damn.

I have no idea what Paul Emery is talking about. Barry Pruett and others comment all the time. It as to be on Emery's connection not mine. But it probably is better Paul Emry doesn't see all that patriotic stuff, might give him a heart attack./

PaulE 1112am - "What other option do you propose?" I think Gregory's 1131am answer corroborates well with how the Founders divided up the influence of population vs real estate. Going to population alone (i.e. pure democracy) doesn't sustain our founding tenets.

Paul, once again: our state law was overturned in 1968 by the Reynolds decision from the SCOTUS. Before '68, the State Senate "districts" were the COUNTIES of the state. Each County elected One Senator in exactly the way the US Senate is comprised of two Senators from every state.

After '68, in essence, we had two Assemblies... both dominated by LA and 'frisco. In fact some states with Bicameral legislatures just dissolved their Senate in order to comply.

Earl Warren was a dullard and while this decision was lauded by the Jacobins among us, Senator Dirksen did peg the future results accurately.

It would be rich though if stari decisis was not invoked for Reynolds. And Constitutionally it would seem more likely the states should be electing Senators the same as the Us. But not likely. I can see how the left would fight that tooth and nail as they have the urban centers with democrat supermajorities. If a county had one Senator in California that would balance things really well.

Eisenhower gave us Earl Warren as the SCOTUS Chief Justice... I was young during the whole "Impeach Earl Warren" kerfuffle, and was oblivious at the time about the Reynolds decision. How much of the call for impeachments was due to this, and how much was over Brown v. Board of Education, whose importance has held up well over time.

Forbidding states the same bicameral structure chosen by the Framers for the country as a whole is perhaps the worst anti-Federalist decision by the Supremes in the history of the high court.

I did get the senate districts pre-Reynolds a bit wrong... it was partially by population, with groups of up to three counties per district... but no district could be less than one whole county. So, LA County even after it grew like topsy after WWII could have only one state senator, but other small counties might have to share a senator with two other small counties.

Gregory - I was also a bit young and over-hormoned in the 1958 frenzy to 'impeach Earl Warren', especially over an issue such as apportionment, and that between federal and state legislative districts. But what the 'one man, one vote' argument missed was that the Founders in an operational sense did intend for real estate to also have a vote. That was entire purpose for a bicameral house with a Senate membership independent of population.

In '58 I was in pre-school but if the rumblings for impeachment date to '58, that's pointing to Brown v. Bored of Education as the cause...

I vaguely recall running jokes of "Impeach Earl Warren" in Mad magazine back when it was satirical and funny, used to impeach the sanity of the Bircher 'ilk', not sure when... mid '60's maybe. Unfairly or not.

The humorous thing for me was that I can remember the "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper stickers and yard signs and lived long enough to see the "Save The Earl Warren" bumper stickers and yard signs.
OK - the later referred to the Earl Warren Show Grounds in Santa Barbara.
Right next to the 101 on the cross avenue where our daughter and son-in-law lived at the time. Brown vs Board was 54 and I remember the vitriol against Warren was years later. Integration wasn't an issue in California until the busing BS started. Education for non-whites just got worse and housing areas started getting more segregated. Good job, good intentioned idiot white lefties! Now the left demands segregated education. Go figure.

After drifting toward decrepitude since the 1970s, many core cities have experienced real, often bracing, turnarounds. Yet concern is growing that the revitalization of parts of these cities has unevenly benefited some residents at the expense of others. The crucial, and often ignored, question remains whether the policies that have helped spark urban revivals have improved conditions for the greatest number of residents. In a new study for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, we found that, in most cities, unbalanced urban growth has exacerbated class divisions, while doing little to address the decline of middle-class households. Our analysis, which puts special focus on the urban cores of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas, shows that the once-rapid growth of urban cores and their surrounding neighborhoods has slowed dramatically; net domestic outmigration, according to Census estimates, has increased from 10,000 in 2012 to 440,000 in 2017. At the same time, some of the most actively gentrifying areas, such as San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, have become increasingly plagued with social dissolution and rising homelessness.

Russ 329pm - Good catch for additional data. And all this will continue since all these goings on are invisible to our state's Democrat elites who know they are our lords and masters, and that they can now do damn near anything they want with the state. And they're doing it.